Unseen Battles Prologue, Chaps 1 & 2
by Alaskagirl
Summary: Andrew fights for a young girl who is battling an unknown enemy, but has he really met a new threat? Or does our favorite Angel of Death have a history with the mysterious figure who seems to evade him?


Unseen Battles

Prologue

Cassey Williams sat at her computer desk, dumbfounded. Her eyes were focused beyond the screen, somewhere in the past. Suddenly she broke. What had started as tears became a flood of emotion. For the last two weeks, fear, anxiety, and worry had threatened to take her life hostage. And this confirmed it: she was no longer free. With the click of a mouse, Cassey's world was ripped from it's foundations and thrown into the black hole of an ambiguous future. She pulled her shaking hands away from the keyboard. She had been clinching the edge of the desk so hard that her palms were white as a ghost. Her air intake scattered, so she grabbed the inhaler from the top right drawer and breathed in as hard as she could, but it didn't work fast enough. Coughing and choking at the same time, Cassey fell out of her chair and landed on the tile floor, struggling to breathe. She reached for something, someone...anyone for help. The last thing she saw was that repetitive triangular pattern of beige and burgundy that seemed to stretch out for miles before her, although in reality, she was only eight feet away from calling 911.

He watched her from the corner, never flinching an eyebrow. No frown, no smile. Just...observing. After she quit moving, he took out a silver dollar from his left pocket and began flipping it up in the air. And though he never took his eyes off of the body, he flipped one last time, caught it, and turned it over in his hand. "Tails."

Chapter One

Four Weeks Ago

"God, I'm so high." Even though she was five inches away from the mirror, Kerry only saw blurry, vague circles of red and yellow dancing in whatever direction she turned her eyes. Within the last three hours, eighteen trillion of her brain cells had been exterminated, crucified for a good feeling that would end abruptly at about 5:00 am and be replaced by feelings that no twenty-year-old should have to burden. She reached up and put her brunette hair behind her ears. It was oily and was starting to smell like sweat. She found the edge of the bathtub, but it was covered in swimming dark spots; not wanting to think about the possibilities of what those might be, Kerry put her back up against the wall facing the toilet and the sink and slid down until she felt the floor. She started to sing, but it ended up being a whisper with a melody: "Be thou my vision, Oh Lord of my heart. Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art..." Slowly her body started to lean and she fell until the left side of her face was touching the tile, but her mind continued to fall. Through a deep, vast hole she fell and her feet never found the ground.

A tall, slender woman who looked to be in her late fifties slid a hand under Kerry's face. She lifted it enough to place her arm around the girl's shoulders and raise her back up to a sitting position, then she took a wet cloth and held it against Kerry's brow. Her eyes seemed to pierce right through the pitiful, grotesque condition of the child. "Thou my best thought by day or by night; waking or sleeping, thy presence my light."

Chapter Two

Andrew sat on the front steps of 1237 Pleasant Circle thinking about how inappropriate and ironic that name was for this neighborhood. He turned around and glanced at the front door, or what was left of it. Eleven years ago he had escorted Mrs. Dunlap home, never considering the fact that her death had marked the end of one era and reinforced the rise of another. He saw the ambulance flashing red and white in the driveway and the stretcher being led inside, one rusty wheel squealing and refusing to cooperate.

Funny what you remember. Almost 2300 years and millions of assignments later, and he still wondered why certain cases made more of an impact on him than others. He had been with her on and off for a week before she was called, watching as she went from her recliner to the window, to the front door, to the kitchen door, to the side door, and back to her chair. She was paranoid. Three locks on the side and kitchen doors, five on the front. Double latches on all windows, curtains drawn at all hours of the day. Andrew had felt her every rapid heartbeat, watched her physical health decline day after fearful day, saw as her eyes would leave the television and stare at the doorknob, just waiting for...what? What was it that terrified her so? For reasons that Andrew could only speculate on at the time, the Father had chosen not to reveal the source of Betty Dunlap's behavior.

Although it had only been vacant for a decade or so, number 1237 looked beyond the point of no return. The upstairs window was busted in and the siding just above was stained gray and black, evidence of a burn-and-run. Kudzu had made itself at home crawling up the east and back sides of the house, and the front porch had been turned into a graffiti art gallery. Andrew checked his pocket watch. 6:38 am. Suddenly he heard a noise and looked up. The door across the street was starting to open, but whoever was behind it lifted a hand to cover their eyes. Andrew stood and took a deep breath. He watched as she got accustomed to the morning light and finally stepped over the threshold. But she didn't make it far: three steps later, she was leaning over the railing, succumbing to her body's way of throwing out the garbage.

"Hi baby." Andrew didn't even have to look. In fact, he didn't. He just couldn't take his eyes off of Kerry. "That can't be her, Tess. She would have known better..." "This kind of self-depletion does not happen overnight. You know this." They both stood and watched as the girl with pale skin and red eyes made her way down the stairs and towards the street, where dozens of cars were speeding past. One texting on his cell, three talking on their cells, one talking to herself, a lawyer thinking about his latest hearing. Drivers oblivious, or perhaps not so oblivious as just not caring.

"Oh, Tess. I don't think I can do this."


End file.
